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The leader of France's largest collection of French art reacted on Tuesday to a report calling for the return of thousands of works of art in the original countries.
Stéphane Martin, from the musée du quai Branly-Jacques Chirac in Paris, who owns more than two-thirds of the 90,000 African treasures in French public collections, told AFP that the report had tarnished "everything that had been collected. and bought during the colonial period the impurity of colonial crime ".
His comments came a few days after a report by French and African specialists, commissioned by President Emmanuel Macron, had advocated the return of thousands of works in the context of a radical change in policy.
But Martin said changing the law to allow the return of treasures, as the report recommended, "opened the door to maximalist restitution".
The director stated that he would prefer that the great African works of art be disseminated more widely than to be made.
He stated that "the big problem" with the report written by French and Senegalese experts is that it "places historical reparations on the contribution of museums" by explaining and safeguarding the art.
Martin said donations made by people "related to colonization (administrators, doctors and soldiers), or objects collected during scientific expeditions" could be compromised.
He added that many works had been distributed free of charge, citing the case of Dr. Pierre Harter, whose collection came from gifts given him by Cameroonian leaders after treating their families against leprosy.
The director of the museum, which has collections from four regions (Africa, Asia, Oceania and the Americas) also hesitated to the idea of a joint commission proposed by the report to decide the fate of objects if a state demanded their return.
"It would be a huge innovation in French law to give a foreign state parity to determine what was or was not part of its heritage," he added.
Martin argued that the French presidency would probably not support the massive restitution of African works of art.
"After what I read, they closed the door to the report by insisting that museums, and above all universal museums, constitute an important part of our common cultural heritage," he said. he declared.
The director insisted that it was more likely that Macron favors the "circulation of works of art as the main method of sharing cultural heritage".
Calls for the restitution of their cultural treasures are multiplying in Africa, but French law formally forbids the government to cede state property, even in cases of well documented looting.
In a speech delivered in Burkina Faso last November, Mr Macron said: "Africa's heritage is not only found in private collections and European museums".
He then asked the French art historian Benedicte Savoy and the Senegalese writer Felwine Sarr to study the issue. The conclusions of their report, if adopted, could potentially affect tens of thousands of works acquired during the French colonization of sub-Saharan Africa.
Savoy said Sunday on French television: "There should be a right to inheritance for all humanity, not just for Europeans and those who can travel or who have had the privilege of". inherit the spoils from the wars that allowed them to have these objects ".
On Friday, the day the report was submitted, Macron agreed to return "without delay" 26 cultural artifacts plundered by the French army of Benin in 1892, in an extremely symbolic gesture that put pressure on the former colonial powers to that they reproduce the African works of art.
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